The 'forgotten project' it seems, really /has/ been forgotten over the last year, what with all the work going into 0.5.xAnyways, it suddenly popped back up in the back of my mind last night, and so on IRC Deiz & I went through the old (From over a year ago, Feb 2010) write-up here: http://code.google.com/p/naev/wiki/Forgottenproject and began some preliminary brainstorming on reworking it. But it was late, and we were going to sleep, and the discussion was all fragmented (as this is IRC afterall), so that is why I am writing up a more coherent & thought-through version of my ideas (Along with deiz's ideas, and the original writeup by BTAxis.)

Right off the bat, there were a lot of considerations I was immediately taking into account for the reworked plot:1) I really liked the original concept, and so wanted to keep the general preliminary stuff of what was going on in history pretty much the same, with the only updates being things not specifically stated and things that were in contradiction of new canon.2) The original concept, if we ran along with Deiz's ideas of having the biological mutants still around or something like that, could likely run too close to the Soromid, and cause redundancies. Both of us noted this in the IRC discussion. I designed my idea to specifically address this issue.3) The rework would need to maintain a sufficiently dark atmosphere, suitable for inclusion in Naev's general overall storyline. And no sentient aliens (I had originally been going with no aliens outright, but Deiz said non-sentient aliens (ie, bacteria or fungi) could exist, if rarely, on some worlds - this comes into play in his plot-hook): all sentience would still need to be human, or at least human derived.4) The faction, if one arises from this, MUST have a unique niche, storyrole, and feel. Which is a major reason why I wanted to avoid creating a Soromid clone. Likewise, their ships, outfits, and perhaps even worlds should be unique.5) The most preferable outcome would be a faction with playable ships that are "pretty" (from my artist's perspective - ie, making ships that look cool, fun to play, that fit the unique feel of the faction - not /necessarily/ from an actual standpoint of 'is it prettier than say, a field full of flowers?' or 'is it prettier than a Soromid ship?'), not defined by any other existing styles (another reason for wanting them to be unique), with a fully developed line of ships (From small fighters up to top-tier capships). (Yes, I intend to be the one doing the ships).6) It should have good writing: ie, no half-baked plot that is merely an excuse to have MWOAR FACKTSHUNS! (Because that just creates unnecessary fluff, work & redundancies - any new faction should have its own unique slot in the universe: ie, having a second frontier group opposing say, the empire instead, would be highly redundant and just plain unnecessary).7) Creation of the need for new content like ships for them would not be much of a problem, as I'd be willing to make them.

So now, without much further ado, I will get right to the backstory, and then follow that with ideas on the proposed faction that results:

Original BTAxis writeupRemoved ideasNew ideas from Deiz & myselfMy 'main'(as in central to the storyline) idea[My general commentary]

In universe style opening:

The old Empire, in its quest for progress and greater power, set up a number of Great Projects. Historically these were Project Proteron, charged with social advancement, and Project Za'lek, charged with technological advancement. However, there was a third Great Project [We are assuming it started at about the same time], one that is absent from the history books. This project was intended to achieve evolutionary advancement, a means to powerboost humanity to a better, higher form of life. The name of this project was Project Thurion. [I /really/ like the base idea of this, but OC, we don't want to create another Proteron or Soromid. So I wanted to first run with this outline & try to create something unique with it, rather than scrap it & start anew]

Unlike Proteron and Za'lek, the Empire chose to run Project Thurion in a remote sector, on the fringes of Empire space. Tinkering with the human identity was sure to invite an outraged reaction from the Imperial citizens, and the then-time Emperor had already recently had to cede control of many worlds to House Dvaered[The Dvaered revolts had not take place until long after the project was shut down, as the timeline was changed since this was first written]. The Project was to be conducted in secret. There was no official Imperial presence in the system on any official star chart [I'm thinking that the systems were wiped from the starchart all together, and they were marked as dead ends, which would help one of Deiz's ideas later], and anyone unfortunate enough to stray into the area was mercilessly terminated by the Imperial garrison stationed there.

The Empire experimented in many different ways, including genetic manipulation and mechanical enhancement [!!! Using this as my way out of the Soromid clone debacle - if only to specifically point out that research was done not merely just in the direction of pure biological enhancement, which is what people apparently are assuming, given the writup seems to give it the most attention] of the human body. Over several decadesdecaSTU[time system has been nailed down to STU since then], any amount of variations on the human blueprint were conceived and subsequently terminated when it became clear the subject was unfit for even the most basic ways of life. Some of the specimens showed some promise, however, displaying intelligence or great strength, and so the Project continued.

Three more worlds were added to Project Thurion, each with wildly varying planetary conditions and climates. The experiments intensified, the specimens now no longer being mere augmented humans but actually cross-bred with indigenous life [Where Deiz's hook comes in] or exposed to radioactive substances [These guys read to many comic books from the 60's & 70's - radiation =/= superpowers, and you'd need a lot more test subjects to hope random mutation would be a viable approach - I'm thinking it can be omitted.]. Needless to say, most subjects died, and those that did not were invariable disfigured, disabled or insane. Not a single one turned out to be the leap forward in evolution that the Empire had hoped to achieve. [None of those reported were, anyways...]

And so the Project was shut down, considered a failure by all involved [officially it was at any rate]. The worlds that had served as the test beds for the Project were abandonedwere nuked from orbit[as Deiz pointed out, the radioactive isotope signatures would be a dead giveaway, whereas remnant organisms containing mere hints of the project would not necessarily be, because you'd actually have to bother to analyze them. Much easier just to keep them off the star map, and make the systems nearby as dead ends], and the Empire left the systems for good. After that, no more mention was made about Project Thurion. All records of its existence, such as they were, were erased. Those that had been involved began dying under suspicious circumstances, and within a year of the Project's termination there were only a handful of people left who even knew the name. They, too, died eventually, leaving no trace of the Project behind. It was as if there had never been any experimentation at all.

Yet, out there, in the darkest corners of the galaxy, there are those who remember Project Thurion...

</in-universe>

*jumping to the present day*: A research corporation is interested in gathering samples of rare alien lifeforms (ie, bacteria-analogs, fungi-analogs, stuff like that - no sentient aliens, or even highly complex life), and they hire you to venture out to these worlds [often their presence is found via spectral analysis of transiting planet atmospheres or something, not unlike what we are doing today, I would imagine - much safer and probably easier & less expensive than sending out people to scour the backwaters of the galaxy with huge supplies of fuel & angry pirates chasing after them] - and so only once they have located a candidate world, will they send someone out to go retrieve samples. The pay per sample is pretty nice too, more if the systems enroute are infested with pirates or some other hazard.

After several missions, you are given the option to take up a mission a bit more unusual: this one will involve some poking around, as the systems enroute just seem to dead-end around where the world should be located. This one will involve some poking around: afterall, the maps of this area date way back, when sensors were not as sophisticated and could not as easily detect jump points [Ref: Sirius - http://wiki.naev.org/wiki/House_Sirius ], and so you may be able to find a way through. And as usual bring plenty of fuel.

Once the player arrives in one of the dead-end systems, lo-and-behold, as predicted, there will be a jump point or two that brings them along an undiscovered path of systems, to the 3 systems of Project Thurion (note that they will not have noticed anything necessarily out of the ordinary yet!). If the player lands on the target planet, the player will retrieve some samples, and then head back to recieve pay. As usual, they will continue getting normal missions for a bit, but then the results of that sample you retrieved will come back from the researchers, and they will have discovered that there are fragments of human DNA or some similar telltale sign that something fishy is going on.[This is as far as we got last night]Investigation commences...

The following is my WIP idea/proposal for the events of Project Thurion & beyond.Everything below would be in green, but that would be annoying to read so much text in green, so I'm not going to do that and simply lay out the idea just as is. Note that a good amount of the filler (extraneous fluff details that are there for the sake of completeness) can be changed about without too much consequence. It also does not contain the hook or storyline the player can follow yet; those details can be worked out later as this post took forever to write and I have to go in about 10 minutes.Here's what "really" happened:

In the process of experimenting with mechanical augmentation early in the lifespan of Project Thurion, one of the scientists discovers a possible method by which he thinks he can upload a mind. However its only a very rudimentary idea at this stage - he files the idea away as something to tinker with in his spare time & focuses on his assigned task at hand. No information of this ever gets to the Empire or the Project's administration.

Still, time goes by and as a whole, Project Thurion is waning; the administrators are pressing for more successes but nothing is really coming in, the Empire is getting impatient for good news as well. Already various proposals are being axed and scientists being regrouped to work on the few last potentially promising veins of research.

In the last days of Project Thurion, he manages to perfect the process, aided by a few other scientists who thought the idea had some merit. However, they are older now [aging prevention technology is much less advanced at this point in time! Thus 30-50 deca STU is a good chunk of one's lifespan]. Perhaps they were more jaded. Perhaps they were aware of their own mortality.At any rate, they knew that they didn't have long in any case, regardless if natural causes or mysterious circumstances claimed them. They had the key to the next step in human advancement - a way to near-immortality, or so they felt - they were not about to let the military's grubby little fingers try to snatch it away to utilize its full strategic potential, as would probably happen by this point if they did reveal it, given it was unlikely that Project Thurion was going to survive another STU with the general impatience from the administration at the lack of advancement displayed so far.

As Project Thurion was being cancelled, they uploaded themselves to one of the transport ships that was to 'take everyone back'. It was a transport nobody would miss, in fact that was why they were selected in the first place; as the military had no intention of letting the transports reach civilization and was planning on destroying them several systems out. Meanwhile, a faked 'lab accident' conveniently disposed of their now brain-dead former bodies, getting them put on the list of personnel who had been accounted for.The people on the transport were doomed anyways; they had no qualms about what happened next. Using their integration with the ship's computers, they caused an airlock to open mid-flight, just as the ship was leaving the planet. A military ship 'escorting' the transports came to investigate the distress signal, finding nothing but a transport with asphyxiated bodies that would plummet back down the the planet in a couple more orbits. They decided to simply not bother with destroying it, and simply headed out, leaving the derelict ship to destroy itself. Once everyone was out of range, they reactivated the ship and headed out on their own.

From there, they then went on to live in the computers of various ships and stations for a while, before transmitting themselves to another ship, and going into hiding there, never staying in one place too long to avoid detection. However, this travel also served another purpose: they still required their flesh & blood brethren, at least out of convenience. They were able to seek out individuals who would be likely to join them in their cause, recruiting them for a mysterious privately funded enterprise. Not everyone was told what it really was, only those who would be likely to accept them were; for example, many corporations were manipulated into having resources shipped out to remote systems; several contractors were hired to construct shipyards and stations with those materials.

The 'Thurion' (Working name to refer to the uploaded consciousnesses & their human followers) provided what they promised, if only to avoid arousing suspicious, faking returns when the could and scrubbing all traces of their presence.

Attempts had been made at breaching Za'lek's security systems in order to obtain their technology, however given that they had some of the best computer security in existence, the Thurion eventually gave up and turned to stealing technology from the Empire, and better yet, some of their best minds, taking them in to work for the Thurion.

Eventually, they managed to severe most of their connections with the rest of humanity - they had all they needed to be self-sufficient, including flesh & blood human followers who had chosen to help them advance, but had not yet chosen to join them in their uploaded form - though many would do so before their biological bodies died. They needed to be as discrete as possible, keeping a low profile, out in back-water systems, for they were still a minor power, holding only systems with very little resources, incapable of building a large fleet. However, they did maintain their intelligence-gathering operations, spying on less-secured computer systems. Not everything was accessible to them: the Thurion never did learn of the gate project or the Proteron sabotage; they were as mystified as any by the Incident when it struck. Security at the highest levels was too difficult to breach, and they had their own research & development to put their processing power to work on.

Unlike everyone else however, the Thurion were uninjured by the Incident. In fact, they may have been the only ones to view it as a positive turn of events. Being so far out in the galaxy, they had been restricted to systems of little value, where resources were few, and they would attract no attention. However, given their need for secrecy, the gargantuan sensor-disrupting Sol nebula that resulted posed the perfect hideout - not to mention it still contained all the resource-rich core worlds of the Empire, ripe for the picking, so long as they could get to them. At first, the Thurion restricted themselves to the outer edges of the nebula, because of the volatile inner regions and lack of sensor capabilities. But they were undeterred: while every other civilization was either sent reeling by the blow that the Incident had dealt or simply apathetic to it, the Thurion focused the whole of their ability on entering the nebula, developing shields capable of negating the effects of the nebula before even the Proteron. Still, they did this discreetly, keeping to systems that they knew nobody was going to be investigating; they could quickly move out before the Empire moved in to build Cerebus station. They thought Proteron had been obliterated by the Sol Nebula; it was a surprise to them when they detected the Proteron ships on tests navigating through the nebula. Given the Thurion's superior sensor technology in the nebula, they were able to safely escape without detection.

Thurion in the present day:

At present day, the Thurion are actively exploring systems in the Sol Nebula, harvesting as many resources as they can. However, the stunningly fast regrowth of Proteron has thrown a wrench in their plans: they had initially expected to be able to rise to the dominant power unhindered, and simply have everyone flock to them for protection, at which point they would begin the process of cultural assimilation (and consequently literal assimilation), finally fulfilling their goal of ascending humanity to its next stage of existence. Not to mention being the undisputed power in control of the galaxy. The Thurion had been planning on biding their time and building up a hidden superpower within the nebula; afterall, they had started out the weakest and smallest state, having been hidden away all that time: even the remnants of Proteron directly following the Incident had more collective power than the Thurion.

Through their rapid ascent via the exploitation of the nebula, the Thurion have managed to gain more or less equal footing with the rest of the major powers (excluding Proteron which is more powerful than any other single major power, given its equally fast, if not faster, growth following the Incident.) (Note that they are probably still on the small side comparatively speaking, likely still the weakest of the major powers, but if not by all that much). However, Proteron's incursions into the nebula as well as the Empire's more recent attempts at probing into the nebula as well, have resulted in Thurion having to scale back its operations to avoid detection. If Proteron continues on this path, it could very well force Thurion's hand, causing them to reveal their presence.

Thurion Info:

Society: The Thurion are led by the uploaded upper 'caste' of sorts, with supporting ranks of flesh & blood humans (all of whom are descended from the humans who had initially been sought out and brought in by the founding Thurion), who are seen in a sense as children (in a paternal sort of way) by the uploaded Thurions, as these humans will eventually join their ranks as they grow old and near death - they have been bred and/or indoctrinated to be completely loyal, seeing themselves as on the path to the perfection that the uploaded Thurion are on. The humans mostly engage in flying ships and maintaining systems, while the Thurion themselves live in massive stations, and occasionally control some of the larger ships of their own. The humans have full freedoms, and there is an emphasis on education, but its not only restricted to science and engineering as the Za'lek would; practical skills such as systems maintenance & piloting are also very important, though generally they would avoid ever giving someone only basic occupational training and neglecting the training that they would need upon being uploaded.

The Thurion generally see themselves as being higher than the rest of humanity, but not in a malicious way; they did afterall have their origins in a project meant to ascend humanity, as opposed to destroy & replace them. Nonetheless, they are also concerned with coming to dominance.

Systems: The Thurion would hold systems in two distinct clusters, one probably out in the outlying fringes with a clean, vacant access route to the nebula, and a number more systems in the nebula itself, but away from that central access corridor running from the Empire side to the Proteron side through Sol, due to the Proteron activity in the region.

Ships & Outfits: Although they are not known by any faction, and are encountered by very few (mostly just pirates unlucky enough to venture into their original systems, which still serve as their headquarters, as their Sol Nebula operations are pretty much just mining, and shipbuilding, in some of the more remote systems - to put their headquarters there would risk discovery by the Proteron or possibly Empire.), they do plan on eventually revealing themselves, and will need to have an un-challengable force when they do so. Smaller ships, generally of the more 'civilian' or 'non-combat' nature tend to focus on speed and stealth to prevent detection (mostly these are scouts and transports), while their military ships are designed to convey the idea that they are imposing and superior, and that you should join them, as opposed to stealth; for the moment, most of their warships are tucked safely away in their primary systems or around their shipyards in the nebula, to prevent anyone from reporting their existence; they don't need stealth.They rely heavily on beam weaponry from massive, high-power, long-duration beams (With slow recharge) designed for anti-capship uses, to small short-duration rapid-firing beams for anti-fighter use. They also place a heavy focus on shields, mostly ever since the Incident, as a result of their necessity to venture into the nebula.Aesthetically speaking, their ships would be dark and 'gracefully angular'(conveying that sense of power and superiority) (as opposed to the menacing Soromid or the insane scientist's machinations of the Za'lek), but with probably glowy blue highlights on the warships, while the small stealthy ships would be just plain dark.

If this goes through, I'd be more than willing to set up all of the necessary resources for them (from systems to ships to stations to outfits) as well.

Hokay. First off, and with regard to the OP's opening remarks, let me point out that I originally wrote the Forgotten project in a period when I was re-inventing all of the factions. At the time the Soromid were still only an idea, they might not have happened at all (this is still reflected in their "TODO?" system on the galaxy map). The Forgotten Project was meant to complement the other Great Projects in a genetic manipulation setting, but with the establishment of the Soromid I discarded the idea for exactly the reason mentioned in the OP, namely that it would be too similar. It's heartening to see that it may still come to some good.

I think the "cyber-life" angle works, though noting that it is reminiscent of Alpha Centauri's transcendence storyline. After reading the OP, I want to touch on some of the aspects in greater detail.

Nature of the uploaded individualsI want to know in greater detail what the transfer from a biological entity to a computerized entity means. How do these people perceive the world? Do they have increased mental/computational capacities, and if so, what are the consequences? The writeup mentions that computer security is effective against them, so they must have some limitations still. And what about making copies of uploaded minds, or deletion of same? What does it mean for an uploaded individual to move from one place to another, and how do uploaded individuals interact? Can they access each other's memories? Is there still such a thing as privacy? Et cetera. The point here isn't really to get all philosophical, but to establish a state of being for the uploaded Thurions to write around.

Biological ThurionsThe writeup explicitly mentions the need for corporeal members of the faction, but I'm not entirely sure about why there is such a need. I assume it might involve the need for maintenance of equipment designed for humans that can't be adequately handled by robotic means, but maybe there are other reasons as well? Or maybe the whole point is to give the player the opportunity to be part of the faction without sacrificing his body, and we're writing explanations around that?

Ramifications for other storylinesThe writeup mentions that the Thurions have conquered the nebula already, and are aware of Proteron's existence. Especially given the Thurions' ultimate objective, this could mean they must be written into both the Empire's and Proteron's major campaigns. Their unrestricted access to the nebula might also be problematic for the Incident storyline, as a visit to Sol will likely be part of uncovering that storyline. There may be a need to keep even the Thurions out of the most volatile systems.

Occupied systemsWith the writeup's placement of Thurion space, we'll need to make some adjustments to the galaxy map, not only adding the required extra systems, but also placing intact worlds in nebula systems (currently nebula systems tend not to have any planets at all). This isn't a problem, of course. One thing I'm not entirely certain about is the location of the Forgotten project's original systems, which might be difficult to place. Outer systems on the east side might be too close to Sol to count as remote, and elsewhere the other factions might get in the way. Some experimenting is probably called for there.

AlsoI've got a file with random ideas for one-off missions, one of them being this:

* Runaway assistantA Za'lek scientist's assistant contacts you through the mission computer and asks you to transport some of his belongings offworld. Once in space it turns out the "assistant" is an artificial intelligence, and the belongings are the server hardware on which it runs. You are to smuggle the AI to Dvaered space, where nobody will look for it.

Depending on how you look at it, this Forgotten Project revamp either obsoletes it entirely, or with some alterations, fits in with it like a glove.

Anyways, getting to the responses: (note that these are for the most part quite mutable, and can be changed as dramatic necessity requires. I'm trying though to impose limitations, as the creation of a marysuetopia is gamebreaking - they can be powerful, but realistically so, not to the point it breaks people's suspension of disbelief.)

Uploaded individuals:

The process of uploading a the mind results in that personality now running directly on computerized hardware, which does have a number of personality changes, while still retaining the more deeply ingrained memory patterns. Many bodily appetites are lost (ie, the need to eat, the need to sleep, etc), however their general personality tendencies are usually just as they were. Emotional responses are generally drawn very much from memory, and as such tend to be toned down. Memory however does not decay; it stays as fresh as it was the day they uploaded. Anything 'learned' post-uploading stays in pristine condition until it is deleted or compressed with lossy compression. (which is sometimes done with memories an individual considers to be of low importance).

They are only as powerful as the host systems upon which they run, which is why they have always been limited in their ability to decipher systems that are heavily protected (ie, Za'lek computers, upper-tier Empire government computers - any sufficiently large RSA encryption key can keep even their combined efforts out; the decryption scales linearly, while the cracking scales exponentially (or something like that)). As such, to maximize their computational abilities, they generally prefer to 'live' on large stations (Which are essentially gargantuan supercomputers), where they put that processing power to use in designing new technologies for the current fleet buildup, strategizing, and analyzing incoming intelligence data; as of late, they have had little downtime - too many things to do.In human terms of what this processing power would feel like: If someone threw you a ball, you would be able to near-instantly determine its trajectory, drag, mass and optimal path of movement in order to catch it, given constants like gravity and the fluid friction.

There is still definitely a feeling of individuality between each individual, and so usually they will not simultaneously share hardware, if simply to respect the rights of the others and not hog all the processing power to themselves. Privacy still exists, as memory constructs are fairly analogous to files, and tend to be made in discreet units. Thoughts are analogous to processes, and are discreet units as well. Memories however can be shared, made public, or they can be kept private.

Minds can be transmitted very easily from Thurian technology to Thurian technology (technology being say, a large ship or station, smaller if necessary. Some things such as fighters or scouts are too small to house a fully Thurian mind ), as they are optimized for such high-bandwidth transfers. Thurians must still physically travel by ships containing them between systems, given the bandwidth limits of FTL transmissions [From IRC, it was established that the limit is probably something like just text, sort of like dial-up, and it requires message buoys, which the Thurians are also unlikely to leave lying around between their outlying core systems and the nebula]

The copying of minds is generally heavily discouraged, but can be done in trying circumstances, or when an uploaded Thurian goes on a mission they may not return from (in the form of a backup, in the event they do not return. It has had a tendency to be awkward and confusing most of the time, and at worst, when they actually get along all too great, they will tend to make more copies, which tends to eat up system resources very quickly.

Note that this applies to the Thurian uploaded minds as of the Post-incident era; early on they were able to use lower forms of technology, back before when they had not such a massive accumulation of data, back before their society had changed and they were still relying on the rest of humanity, if usually covertly.

Biological individuals:

Thurian humans are important for several reasons:1) Templating or copying existing minds does not end well. While it is possible for a mind to be 'born' directly through artificially constructing it, this is a very slow process, as it takes many iterations of different parameters to ensure a successful new personality. The Thurians would eventually like to move on to this stage, to completely remove the necessity of a biological stage, but they simply have never had the resources to devote to it. Its much easier to simply let the biological Thurians grow up and then be uploaded once they are sufficiently matured.2) Small ships are generally piloted by young biological Thurians; Thurian society places a higher value on the life of the uploaded, one-on-one, because of the greater experience, processing power and knowledge they have. They also tend to crew large capital ships (and on occasion, captain them as well), and tend to the hardware of the uploaded Thurians on stations and large ships. Because of bandwidth restrictions on FTL communications, ships cannot be flown remotely by an uploaded Thurian between systems; this would require a large ship to accompany them, and on things like scouting missions, it would be very difficult to do so.3) This would also allow the player to not need to be uploaded in order to pilot a Thurian ship. Although its ok if they do become uploaded during the Main Factional Campaign for the Thurians, if ship capturing was ever implemented, this would lead to some serious fridge logic. It also leaves the option open to having the player not upload during the Main Factional Campaign, which might actually be preferable as it would allow the player to continue piloting other ships (unless they actually decided to moderate themselves and be like the Thurians of old who didn't engorge their memory with cached data like a hungry browser trying to save on loading time, running hundreds of different iterations of the 500-node traveling salesperson problem in order to create a dynamic economy for Naev (IRC reference). - of course, we don't want to assign actions to the player (ie, "the player did this, the player said this"))Ramifications for other storylines:As was noted on IRC, other storylines have not yet been sufficiently developed, so this would probably not be too big of an issue. Using chapter terminology from here: http://wiki.naev.org/wiki/Campaign_structureAt any rate, they would NOT show up in any other faction's chapters 0 or 1 at all. There may be some instances [ie Proteron or Empire] where they could pop up in chapter 2, but in virtually all instances, they would usually be 'late to the party' so to speak due to their hidden nature, showing up in chapter 3 for pretty much every campaign.

Random note:I'm thinking that Deiz's ideas on the research mission would count as 'chapter 0' for the Thurian.

Occupied systems:Though yes, experimentation would likely be called for, I was envisioning that their primary worlds would be out to the north west (so they would have access through an empty corridor between the empire and the soromid), but upon further consideration that the Soromid would need a path to the rest of the factions in order to conduct trade and whatnot, I think perhaps the NorthEast of the current map might work better, as it gives them direct access to the outer nebula systems, without needing to cross paths with traderouts running from the Soromid to the Empire.

Also addressing an issue brought up in IRC, was that they should probably also be kept out of even the most heavily irradiated systems. Perhaps the reasoning behind this is that there even their heaviest ships and best sensors were not enough to determine if it was safe enough to travel though; and the Thurian are not likely to waste valuable capital ships on a wild guess, when they can happily consume resources of the systems they already have easy access to.Za'lek mission:Perhaps the aforementioned mind could be a Thurian? (ie, maybe one that did manage to transmit to Za'lek systems, but perhaps couldn't gain any sort of access or control, and was simply thought by the Za'lek that eventually discovered it to be an AI developed by some other Za'lek? The Thurian would probably play along to ensure the secrecy; perhaps even a minor Thurian plot line could assume that some other pilot has already done this, and seeks to rescue the Thurian which is now in dvaered space.

---Other notes on the Thurian main factional campaign itself:Chapter 1 will probably be unique for the Thurians in that it would be where they are first discovered by the player, the alignment is probably solidified in here, which would also mean more plot-driving missions can be introduced to allow them to be discovered (when I say allowed, I mean, us, the writers, are allowing them to be discovered, not the Thurian government trying to set themselves up intentionally to be discovered), and it would be at the end of Chapter 1 that the Thurians are discovered by the world, granting access to Thurian equipment in chapter 2 (because I mean, flying a Thurian ship around before anybody knows they exist is sure to raise some eyebrows.)Or maybe in Chapter 2 at first only outfits would be available? You could probably pass it off as something Za'lek if anyone gets too nosy.Because nobody but a Za'lek is likely to know it wasn't made by the Za'lek.

Thurion outfits:Since on IRC, it came to light that Za'lek were drones AND beams, I decided to change the base weapon grouping of the Thurian to short-range (relative to missiles) homing devices, including perhaps some ammoless varieties.

At the moment thats all just an idea and the balance & weapon types will be fleshed out later down the line I'm thinking.

Minor major factionwith respect to both the weapon trees and nebula reach issues, I think it may be best to keep Thurion a relatively small faction, in terms of occupied space. They'd still get their own campaign and everything, but they would only have a handful of worlds. As for technology, I think it might be an idea to focus solely on ships and forego unique weapons completely. So they'd be using the top level non-military weapons used by everyone else, but to compensate their ships could outperform even the other faction ships, particularly in the shielding department.

SightingsI was thinking, what if the Thurion ships had been sighted by other factions' ships venturing some way into the nebula? The sightings wouldn't have been definite, appearing more like sensor glitches, but there would be several instances of them. There could even be one or two vague visual contacts. All this would give rise to rumors in spaceport bars that the nebula is haunted by ghost ships. Then, as a modification for the scientist mission, I could add in a small cutscene that has the player make such a sighting himself, using a blacked out version of a Thurion ship (so you only see the outline) disappearing into the nebula. The idea is to make repeated mention of this, so the whole "there's something in the nebula" concept is pervasive.

Minor Major Faction:Systems-Yeah, I think I like the idea of a minor major faction; it would both emphasis that they still more limited in growth compared to all the others, even if they ended up directly benefiting from the incident, while at the same time not requiring too much pace to be moved around; I think that the handful of core worlds they have would pretty much be limited to 3 worlds, two or maybe one having jump routes to vacant systems, and the remaining having jump routes only inside their space, while their nebula holdings would be 'larger' but all relatively new (ie, no big settlements, just mining facilities on the dead planets and shipyards); this would also result in a larger-than-normal concentration of ships in their systems (mostly their fleet buildup), which would match their recent-history background text, and not require them to encroach too far into the nebula.Weapons- This could be feasible, given that they may have focused all their energies on designing their ships, and were not planning on being revealed this soon, that they are still using civilian designs, which would be probably accessible in the nearest patent office's database (or whatever the Empire's equivalent is), with no level of classification, meaning they wouldn't have to waste any physical resources on experiments and prototypes, nor computational resources on developing them.A note on shields & the nebula; I'm guessing that their shields would have the 'more shielding & regen' approach to defeating the nebula as opposed to the 'negate the effects altogether' approach taken by the Proteron? That would make sense, given the Proteron have the industry capable of spending the time on this. It would also allow the Proteron to simply fly their fighters and other light ships through instead of requiring them to be on capships through even Sol, while the Thurion would only dare to send their heaviest ships into such volatile regions, which they consider to be a wasteful folly when they haven't even gotten even close to drying up their current sources of materials which reside in much safer areas of the nebula.

Sightings:I like the idea of people thinking they are ghost ships or "something mysterious", mostly just from the high level of stealth their smaller ships have, and the general aesthetic their larger ships would have if spotted. Given the nature of the rumors, the Thurion are highly unlikely to do anything about it.I was also thinking that even if you were flying around in some of their factional ships before they were revealed, nobody would still really be able to connect your ship to theirs, as nobody would even know what they would look like; they would likely just believe it to be some kind of prototype or exotic ships or whatnot. Perhaps there could be an encounter with someone in a bar who'd like to buy a 'ship like yours', and you could make a fat profit off of it, but it would set you back a bit reputation-wise due to the 'you just put our security at risk!' nature of it, thus requiring further minor campaign strings/minor missions to advance/regain the reputation?

I also like the idea of the cutscene, having the player witness such an event as well.

Ok, so I was looking over the weapon trees - http://naev.googlegroups.com/attach/8c2 ... w=1&part=2 , and I don't know how well having no unique weapons would work out; having no restrictions could result in funky, mismatched ship loadouts (ie, one ships has a bunch of rail guns and another had ion cannons, and another has beams), while sticking with just one or two trees can result in very homogeneous loadouts (primarily for the capships), ie, every capship is covered in heavy laser turrets.

Going to have to give this more thought, even though I like the concept, I'm a bit lost as to how to make it actually *work* in-game.

I'll put up a more polished one tomorrow & remember not to misspell Deiz's name in the annotations.

Now some draft logos:

Large landing screen & Disposition screen logo

This is the large size used on landing screens

Thurion big logo.png (2.91 KiB) Viewed 6397 times

Small targeting display logo

This is the small size used in the targeting display

Thurion small logo.png (860 Bytes) Viewed 6397 times

I was having trouble getting inkscape to do gradiants the way I wanted, so I just ended up making a giant rasterized version. (1024px)This version is more than sufficiently large for use on the wiki. (I think those are ~256px)

Good work on the map mockup, we can probably use that as-is, so save it away in a branch or something. Why is the jump between Metsys and Sopecsoryg colored red and not green, though? Also, I would maybe set the secret jump from Midoros to lead to Iris directly, since having to jump from Percival would probably put the Thurion a little too close to other traffic coming from and going to there. The secret jump would complement the "ghost ship" effect since they would appear to vanish into nothingness.

I'm also considering "leaning" the Soromid area a bit more to the left, to create some more room in between them and Thurion.

I was going to polish it up by renaming some of the systems today, and there were a few other tweaks I had to make as well - I can move the Midoros secret jump to Iris as well, which wouldn't be a problem.